Paul Hoffman’s The Left Hand of God is a poorly written bundle of fantasy and religious stereotypes with nonexistent characterisation and a plot that never leaves the ground. We can’t recommend highly enough that you don’t go out and buy The Left Hand of God. And if you already have, leave it on the shelf.

After all of the pre-launch hype that the book received, we were expecting something more than this. We were expecting a book that would at least be an interesting and engaging read, if not the next Assassin’s Apprentice or A Game of Thrones. What we got instead was a book that was so painful to read that we didn’t finish it. A book that has characters which are never fleshed out and a plot that never made sense in a world that didn’t have any detail.

If you read the synopsis of The Left Hand of God on the back cover, you will probably believe that you are about to read a book along the same lines of Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind.

Like Rothfuss’s epic tale and many other fantasy books, The Left Hand of God is about a young boy – and, true to the stereotype, he is an unusual boy in a land of hardship. Thomas Cale lives in The Sanctuary of the Redeemers – some form of religious sanctuary cum prison where boys are taken at a young age to be put through the brutal training that will enable them to live up to the sect’s particular vision of God.

But Cale is not like the others.

Where they cling to their illicit friendships as the only comforts they have in the face of the sheer mindless brutality of their redeemer masters, Cale is cold and friendless. Where the other boys seek merely to survive, Cale appears to be thinking below the surface of events, beyond the daily grind.

You can see where this is going.

As the book’s synopsis states, soon Cale “will open the wrong door at the wrong time and witness an act so terrible that he will have to leave this place, or die”.

In short, it is Cale’s fate to leave the Sanctuary of the Redeemers and make his escape to the world outside his walls, a world where he will grow and develop while simultaneously moving towards some unknowable destiny that will change the face of the world.

We gave The Left Hand of God quite a chance throughout its opening chapters. Because of the hype, we were prepared to overlook some of the glaring examples of poor writing in its pages. And if the book had been written with more skill, after all, the setting could have been a fruitful one. It is often through adversity that characters are best developed, and Hoffman certainly sets up a series of difficult situations for Cale in his book.

However it speedily became apparent as we moved through the book that it was just poorly written.

Cale’s role – as the mysterious child with unexplainable powers – think Paul Atreides from Dune – is to make his speedy advance throughout the world outside the Sanctuary, learning more about it at every turn while still being part of a wider plot that is slowly being unraveled. He will be pursued, he will make friends, he will gawk at young, attractive women and fall in love with them.

And yet the way that this journey takes place is so different from the mental and physical journeys of similar fantasy protagonists such as Pug in Magician and Fitzchivalry Farseer as to be a world apart. Hoffman doesn’t bother to explain why his protagonist is different from those around him (apart from, in one memorable occasion, to attribute Cale’s swordsmanship to a fall on his head). Cale is simply, somehow, different.

Fair enough, you might say. Hoffman might explain Cale’s difference later on. But trust me, it’s not like that. Cale’s difference is not the difference of a character in a Steven Erikson book, or a R. Scott Bakker book. It’s the difference of a character who an author has not created a complicated character for. It’s the difference of a stereotype of “the unusual boy, mature beyond his years”.

The same can be said for all of the book’s other characters. The Redeemers are utter stereotypes of religious zealots. They’re not human. They merely proselytize and commit casual acts of brutality on their charges, randomly, without meaning. Often-times Hoffman appears to use the blows of the Redeemers as some form of attempt to help build Cale’s character.

But without any meaning attached to the violence by either side, no character development takes place.

It’s a similar situation with other characters in The Left Hand of God. The young, nubile, innocent woman. The likably roguish wanderer who turns out to be of noble blood. The corpulent chancellor. The sidekicks who never quite understand Cale. The arrogant sons of noblemen who Cale cuts down to size. Every single character in the book is a stereotype of one form or another and it wears insufferably on the reader. There is no complexity to any of the characters.

There are two other aspects of the book which grate. Firstly, the plot is a nonsense. Characters commit certain acts for no discernible reason, or for reasons against their apparent character. The world itself seems to shift to make way for Cale’s progress through it, while he himself appears to be an immovable object.

It’s as if everyone who meets Cale decides that because he is the focus of the story, everything should shift around him. If there is a wider plot to the book that doesn’t involve Cale himself, we couldn’t discern it. And yet, this is the sort of world backdrop that makes fantasy novels so rich and makes the fans enjoy them.

The other thing which frustrated us about the book is the constant comments from the author’s point of view which are inserted into the text. The author will comment that somebody is “obviously” this, or obviously that, as if he is making a snide aside comment on them from the right of stage.

These “editorial” comments are incredibly amateurish and totally break up the flow of the book. They’ll make you feel as if you’re reading writing from a high school student. You just can’t do this sort of thing in an adult novel. Hoffman also uses them to avoid having to describe details of certain scenes. It’s like he’s taking the reader aside for a second and saying: “Hey, you know what a dungeon is like, right? So I don’t really have to describe it, right? OK then. Let’s skip that bit.”

There are one or two redeeming features about The Left Hand of God. Hoffman has an interesting concept in the Sanctuary, and of course everybody likes reading fantasy stories about cold, calculating youngsters – this sort of character has an intrinsic fascination because they’re so far outside the norm.

But The Left Hand of God does not represent a good effort at exploring that setting and that character. It is an amateurish, poorly written third-rate fantasy novel packed full of stereotypes and devoid of anything interesting for the experienced reader. Avoid it like the plague.

just wanted a pen a brief note to let everyone know that Keeping the Door is now back in business again after a four-month hiatus that lasted three months more than I originally planned.

The simple reason for the break was that in January this year, I left my job as the News Editor of Australian technology publication ZDNet.com.au to start my own new media startup, LeMay & Galt Media. You can read more about the company on its website.

I love fantasy and science fiction books, but it’s a bit hard (at least in the short term) to make much of a living from a small website writing about their authors and reviewing the books themselves.

So my first task with LeMay & Galt Media has been to launch a new Australian technology publication, Delimiter, which has a business model of licensing its content to other publishers on a monthly basis, similar to the way AAP or Reuters does.

Delimiter has already been relatively successful — enough so that I now have an office and have employed my first, part-time staff member. So I am now able to start to pay a bit more attention to Keeping the Door.

Some things around the site have changed with a re-design (let me know if you see anything out of place, it’s still a bit rough around the edges!) and the site itself is now owned and published by LeMay & Galt Media.

But by and large it will now re-commence operations, publishing a handful of news stories about the sci-fi/fantasy book scene each week, and regular reviews.

To kick off this week we’ve just published a review of Robin Hobb’s new book Dragon Haven, which we absolutely loved. Go out and buy it if you’re a Hobb fan. And if you’re not a Hobb fan, what the hell is wrong with you? Go out and buy Assassin’s Apprentice, or borrow a dog-eared copy from one of your wiser friends :)

Anyway, it’s good to be back, and I look forward to getting up to speed with the SFF book world. I have quite some reading to do!

Cheers,

Renai LeMay

Publisher, Keeping the Door
Proprietor, LeMay & Galt Media

Spoiler warning: This review contains some mild background on Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series, although it does not contain spoilers for Dragon Haven. If you haven’t read Hobb’s previous works in this series, you probably shouldn’t be reading Dragon Haven or this review.

With Dragon Haven, fantasy master Robin Hobb has begun to rekindle some of the magic that had left her most recent works, particularly the Soldier Son trilogy. The book represents a satisfying conclusion to the two book series –The Rain Wild Chronicles — Hobb has penned as a follow-up to her extended nine book saga The Realm of the Elderlings, while still leaving room for future works in that world.

What a seasoned Hobb fan will most note about Dragon Haven is that it contains a great deal of the subtle plot and character creation and gradual world revelation that Hobb had perfected in her Elderlings saga. There is a wonderful undercurrent of ideas and emotions swirling through Hobb’s prose that constantly leaves the reader both guessing and angsty that her characters don’t know the full picture and haven’t worked through their internal turmoil.

But the book doesn’t have the same kind of drawn-out pacing that plagued the Soldier Son trilogy. Instead, I found it a pleasure to read.

I came down pretty hard on Hobb after I finished The Dragon Keeper, the first book in The Rain Wild Chronicles. And now I have to admit Hobb has taken any criticism from myself and others she read on board, and created a book in Dragon Haven that her fans will simply love.

Like The Dragon Keeper, the plot of Dragon Haven takes place in the Rain Wilds, the exotic area located upstream of Bingtown, the city where much of the action in The Liveship Traders is set, at a time shortly after the concluding events at the end of The Tawny Man trilogy.

In The Dragon Keeper, dragons had returned to the world, but in a stunted and degraded form — they could no fly, and some appeared witless and bestial. In short, they were far from the magical and all-powerful beings of legend.

With the dragons becoming a danger to the humans who tend them and live nearby, the logical next step was to move them upriver to a more appropriate setting; a glorious ancient city the dragons themselves dream of: the fabled Kelsingra. Half of this journey was completed in the first book.

Dragon Haven is in many ways a story of being on the road. Like many novelists, Hobb uses the plot device of her characters travelling through various hardships as a method to force them to grow and develop.

In both the dragons’ and the humans’ cases, the journey is both physical, in the sense that as the book wears on, they endure various hardships and traverse much terrain, and internal, in that these external trials serve as mirrors which force the characters to look into themselves and find who they really are.

For the dragons, this means both becoming physically larger and stronger, while also re-learning and remembering much of their power and their glory. For the humans, the struggle is often tied up in their sexuality. For Rain Wilder Thymara, it’s getting past the idea that her physical defects don’t mean she can’t have a relationship or potentially even bear children. For Bingtown wife and dragon scholar Alise, it means dealing with the reality of her marriage and potential future happiness.

And for poor Sedric, it means coming to a dreadful understanding of what his own relationship with Alise’s husband has truly been about.

Like other ‘road’ books, the eventual fate of Hobb’s individual characters, and indeed the entire expedition, is unclear. Kelsingra was abandoned long ago and may not even exist any more. When you add the constant grinding labour involved in even surviving the Rain Wilds, let alone travelling through them, to internal plots within the expedition and even the dangers of sharing the journey with a bunch of unpredictable dragons, it’s hard throughout Dragon Haven to know where the characters and the book will end up.

But I will say this — the eventual ending of the book is satisfying and worth reaching. Although it leaves room for a continuation of the story — particularly with relation to the potential future revelation of more details about Hobb’s world — it does not leave too much hanging.

All of Hobb’s strengths as a fantasy writer are found in Dragon Haven. Complex, realistic, multi-faceted characters who change and grow. A plot that deceives you into thinking you can foretell its changes in direction — and then twists things around on you. Subtle writing that leaves barely traceable hints of information that you really want to know.

And most of all, lurking beneath the surface of everything Hobb does in Dragon Haven, is the gradual, almost scientific revelation of the secrets of the dragons, their magic, and what it all could mean for the future of the whole world.

If you were disappointed by the Soldier Son trilogy and even by somewhat lacklustre first book in the Rain Wild Chronicles series, The Dragon Keeper, don’t lose your faith in their author just yet.

Robin Hobb is back in form. And with Dragon Haven she’s cutting up the fantasy scene once again. I can’t wait to see what she’s got in store for us next.

In fantasy book fandom, few authors have a reputation amongst hardcore fans as fearsome as the one that rests upon the shoulders of Steven Erikson, co-author of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series.

The Canadian writer, whose real name is Steve Rune Lundin, wields some fearsome credentials. He originally trained as both an archaeologist and anthropologist, and he brings these skills to his novel-writing. His books are billed simultaneously as some of the most challenging and gritty works of fantasy fiction available, but also some of the best, once fans get past the initial reading barriers.

It’s common for fantasy fans to recommend Erikson’s work to each other upon learning that a fellow fan has recently finished reading all of another major author’s work – say, Robert Jordan, George R. R. Martin, Robin Hobb or Janny Wurts.

The assumption is that having made it through a more accessible author, the fan who is the target of the recommendation has now “graduated” to a level where they can read Erikson.

The question that this review will attempt to answer is whether or not Erikson’s reputation is deserved. It’s an appropriate time to examine the topic – Gardens of the Moon, the first book in the Malazan series – recently celebrated the tenth anniversary of its publication – and the last book in the series planned by Erikson – his fellow author Ian Cameron Esslemont also writes in the Malazan world – is on its way.

And just yesterday I finished reading Gardens of the Moon for the first time. So, on with the review.

There is no doubt that Gardens of the Moon is in many ways a challenging book, and readers weaned on the ‘easy reading’ styles of Robert Jordan or Robin Hobb will find it difficult to get past the first few chapters. Erikson consciously avoided many fantasy plot, character and thematic stereotypes when building Gardens of the Moon, and this lends the book a level of difficulty which many will find offputting.

I personally have put Gardens of the Moon down several times over the past few years after reading the first several hundred pages.

And yet, like so many ‘difficult’ books, once the more advanced reader pushes past Gardens’ first few chapters and becomes more comfortable with what Erikson is trying to achieve, it becomes obvious that something rather remarkable and, to be honest, bloody awesome is going on. This is book that enjoys playing with the fantasy tropes that readers have come to expect – in a hilarious, sophisticated and overwhelmingly positive way.

The plot of Gardens of the Moon is complex. The book’s story takes place on a fantasy world where the massive Malazan empire is gradually annexing the territory around it.

War is everywhere, and the Malazans are bringing it to everyone, particularly the free city of Darujhistan, where much of the book is set.

Erikson situates a number of interesting characters in this war-torn world. Sergeant Whiskeyjack and his squad (which includes soldiers, an assassin, a wizard, some explosives experts and more) are part of the legendary Bridgeburners, a section of the armies of the Malazan Empire. Tattersail is a very powerful wizard whose company of mages (also part of the same armies) is virtually wiped out in the first pages of the book.

Then there is an evil puppet, once a sorcerer, a handful of capricious gods and almost-gods (including incarnations of death, chance, and the hounds of hell) who interfere almost constantly in human affairs, a nobleman’s son turned army officer, a thief and a mysterious fat man named Kruppe who seems to be in love with food, wine and all of life’s comforts, an alchemist, an Empress and her tools, and more.

It’s certainly a muddled deck of characters.

And who could forget Anomander Rake, the dark lord of Moon’s Spawn, a mountain which floats across the continent of Genabackis, defying the Malazan Empire at every turn (see image, left)?

When you put all these characters together, with their different gritty histories and motivations (be they petty or grand), the only way you can really describe what comes out of Erikson’s melting pot is “a great big mess”.

No ends are wrapped up neatly in Gardens of the Moon, and just when you think you know a character, their potential, their history and their relationships, Erikson will toss a coin and inject something different into their lives and into his complex narrative.

But what a glorious mess it is.

Gods and almost-gods playing and being played by mortals. Virgin ladies baring breasts to thieves sneaking into their rooms to steal their gold. A manic puppet fleeing the hounds of hell in the chaos between magic ‘warrens’ that wizards draw their power from.

The overarching plot of Gardens of the Moon might well be summed up as something like “to hell with it, the characters said. Let’s just go ahead and see what happens”.

Gardens of the Moon is complete, sprawling, glorious, hilarious chaos.

Having said all that, there are several glaring problems with the book, which I attribute to Erikson’s relative youth as a writer when Gardens of the Moon was put together (he has stated publicly, if I recall correctly, that it was the most difficult book for him to write, and he learned a lot from the process).

For starters, most of the characters in the book are fairly thinly sketched out, and suffer from quite unrealistic motivations that make the plot somewhat unrealistic.

Why Whiskeyjack and the Bridgeburners, for example, don’t simply desert the Malazan Empire’s army … I don’t know. What several gods like Oponn are really trying to achieve … isn’t made clear. The same could be said for Captain Ganoes Paran, the mage Tattersail, Toc the Younger, and more.

Frankly, Erikson threw too many characters in Gardens of the Moon for many of them to have the sort of development that they really need, with the possible exception of Kruppe – whose mysterious nature just intrigues me beyond belief.

This problem of character development means the plot suffers at times in terms of believability. And there are other problems with that aspect of the book as well … Erikson overuses the classic way that many fantasy authors escape thorny plot construction problems. Just use a fairly unexplained magic system to overcome any difficult circumstance!

At far too many times in Gardens of the Moon, just as something difficult has to be resolved in the plot, Erikson throws in a powerful magic effect to bring things back on track.

It’s a cheap stunt, and fantasy authors in general have a lot to learn from series like Mistborn. Magic systems must be limited and work according to rules (even if the reader doesn’t know all the rules) to retain reader belief in them. Otherwise the plot structure sometimes becomes unbelievable because elements in it are not bound by rules.

The final problem with the book is perhaps that Erikson leaves his readers hanging in so many areas. Yes, we do achieve plot closure with many characters … but there are just so many secrets and understandings about the world Erikson has created that he doesn’t do anything to wrap up by the end of Gardens of the Moon. I can only hope and pray that some of the mysteries unveiled in Gardens of the Moon are explained in the other books in the series.

All in all, Gardens of the Moon is a remarkable book and a must-read for the more advanced fantasy fans amongst us. Ten years ago, its publication heralded the birth of a fantastic new epic series in the Malazan Book of the Fallen.

But it’s a flawed novel. It’s not a masterpiece like Assassin’s Apprentice or The Eye of the World that will appeal to everyone. Instead, it’s an breath-taking experiment in fantasy – perhaps along the same line of power as R. Scott Bakker’s The Darkness That Comes Before, which we’re reading at the moment – that experienced fantasy readers will want to add to their collection and ponder deep into the night.

Erikson deserves his reputation. But there’s a reason that reputation has remained relatively confined to hardcore fantasy fans. If you’re reading Keeping the Door, you’re likely one of them. So go and buy a dog-eared copy of Gardens of the Moon and enjoy the glorious mess that it is.

Mariposa, the latest novel by American science fiction author Greg Bear, went on sale last week, accompanied by a limited set of generally positive reviews.

Bear is best known among fans for books like 1985′s Eon and 1987′s The Forge of God, although he has written a variety of other novels, including fantasy books, Star Trek books, and in general has diversified out of the hard science fiction sub-category he mainly wrote in in the 1980′s.

Mariposa pictures an America which has been driven to near bankruptcy by crushing foreign debt. But there is one success story – the Talos Corporation, which trains soldiers and provides logistics and troops for the US Government. But the company’s end goals are somewhat more nefarious – the destruction of the government itself. From the book’s blurb:

Three FBI agents are all that stands between Talos’s CEO Axel Price and the subversion of our nation. Fouad Al-Husam is working undercover in Lion City, Texas, on the Talos Campus—but he may have just overplayed his hand. Agent William Griffin will engage in a desperate diversion to try to rescue Al-Husam, and the top-secret information he literally carries in his blood.

Rebecca Rose is called into action to partner with an unlikely hero: Nathan Trace, one of a team of four who created and programmed the thinking machines that are about to help Axel Price in his plans for domination.

Trace and his colleagues were caught up in a violent incident in the Middle East several years ago, and experienced Post-Traumatic Stress disorder. All of them were forcibly enrolled in a treatment program sponsored by Talos Corporation, code-named Mariposa—which supposedly cured their PTSD.

But now they are beginning to notice unexpected side effects. The Mariposa subjects are being liberated from nearly all human emotions and concerns—and all mental limits—to become brilliant sociopaths. They are out of control and they must die.

Publisher’s Weekly has given the book a positive review, stating that Bear “keeps everything whizzing right along to the slam-bang conclusion”, and an Amazon reviewer noted that the underlying technology in the book was “effortlessly interwoven into the fast-paced, never decelerating story line”.

The book is a follow-up to Bear’s 2005 novel Quantico. Bear’s site notes that Vanguard Press had already gone to press for a second printing of the book – before it was released – which could be an indicator of demand.

Commentary
I’ve read quite a few Greg Bear books (from The Way and The Forge of God series), and while Bear is a competent writer, I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend him as an amazing one.

He’s the kind of writer you won’t mind finding tucked away in the science fiction & fantasy corner of your local bookshop when you stop in there on holidays and need a meaty read. But he’s not the kind of writer you’ll remember for the rest of your life as someone who blew your mind.

American science fiction master Kim Stanley Robinson has slammed the US Republican Party’s attitude towards climate change, describing it as “like the Catholic Church denying the Earth went around the sun in Galileo’s time”.

57-year-old Robinson is best known for his Mars trilogy, but has also written a number of other books, including his recent Science in the Capital series, which explores the consequences of global warming.

The author’s comments came in a new interview published as part of the re-publication of Robinson’s novella Lucky Strike, being published as part of PM Press’s Outspoken Authors series. Robinson says the Republicans are going to crawl away from their climate policy “mistake” later and pretend it never happened. And it’s a dangerous moment on the world stage in general:

“What’s been set up and is playing out now is a huge world historical battle between science and capitalism. Science is insisting more emphatically every day that this is a real and present danger. Capitalism is saying it isn’t, because if it were true it would mean more government control of economies, more social justice (as a climate stabilization technique) and so on.

These are the two big players in our civilization, so I say, be aware, watch the heavyweights go at it, and back science every chance you get. I speak to all fellow leftists around the world: science is now a leftism, and thank God; but capitalism is very, very strong. So it’s a dangerous moment. People who like their history dramatic and non-utopian should be pleased.”

The full interview is available at Shareable.net. Image by AllyUnion.

Commentary
I kind of know how Kim Stanley Robinson feels – in Australia, our conservative party, a coalition of the Liberal and National parties, has similar climate change denial problems.

Australian fantasy author Karen Miller has finished The Reluctant Mage, the next book in her Fisherman’s Children series, which is the continuation of her Kingmaker, Kingbreaker series commenced with The Innocent Mage.

“Shit. I did it. I can’t believe it,” wrote Miller on her LiveJournal page this week. “Well, you know, not done done. It’s up for a rewrite next, after I’ve rewritten Siege. But it’s done, it’s a book, it’s a lot of words with more to come. It’ll end up about the same length or a smidgin longer than Prodigal Mage. But that story is told now. And I think I’m reasonably happy.”

Miller said she had written five novels this year. She noted there were times she had “seriously doubted” she could do it. And she has another two to rewrite before 2010 kicks off. “That’s not a problem. Rewriting is playtime. Rewriting is the reward for the utter agony that is the first draft,” she said.

The Reluctant Mage clocked in at 131,909 words. The book is slated to be published in 2010.

The achievement was celebrated by fans on her site. “Congratulations on reaching the end!” wrote one. “Your determination and output are utterly inspiring (and quite scary at the same time). Hope you manage to get a decent rest now before starting on those rewrites.”

Commentary
Keeping the Door handed Miller a fairly negative review of her last book, The Prodigal Mage. At the time, we wrote:

“The book is a monument to one of the most tempting traps that an author can fall into: to focus so heavily on developing their characters and their interactions that they neglect to situate those characters in an interesting and complex world and with a plot that gradually reveals its twists and turns.”

There are arguments on both sides about Miller’s work. After posting the review, we received several comments from readers that expressed how much they loved The Prodigal Mage. “I loved the Prodigal Mage and while there isn’t as much action in this book as in the others to me it is a taster of things to come,” wrote one.

Other reviewers, such as The Mad Hatter, have described the book as a “fantastic read overall”.

But I have been following Miller’s LiveJournal posts updating fans with her progress on The Reluctant Mage over the past couple of months, and I feel they have given me some insight into what one of the problems might be with Miller’s style.

That problem seems to be that she writes so goddamn fast!

It was only on November 12 (4 days ago) that Miller still had some 30,000 words to write on The Reluctant Mage. Three days later, she had finished the book.

Something about that just strikes me as wrong. 30,000 words … in three days? That’s 10,000 words a day! Even assuming that Miller had done all the planning in the world before the commencement of writing The Reluctant Mage, that is still a phenomenal amount per day.

The reason I know this, is that as a professional journalist I have often been called upon to write a lot of copy per day. But even on my most hectic, insane, 10 hour days, I couldn’t write more than about 4,000 words per day. Nobody in our office could. The fact that Miller is doing so makes me really wonder if it is truly quality writing that she is putting out, or whether she is racing through the writing process too fast, without stopping to consider it all.

Article by Renai LeMay

The Twilight series has sold over 70 million copies worldwide, according to Wikipedia, and is being made into a film series, with audiences enthralled by the love story between American teen Bella and Edward Cullen, a former human who was transformed into a vampire.

In the interview Meyer said she started writing Twilight after having a vivid dream which became chapter 13 of the first book in the series. The scene is the one where Bella and Edward are in the woods and she reveals she knows he is a vampire.

“I just wanted to remember it so badly, that’s why I started writing it down,” she said — not because she initially knew it was going to become a novel.

Fantasy author George R. R. Martin has told his UK publisher he might hand over A Dance with Dragons, the long-awaited next book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, “soon”.

Writing on her own site, Jane Johnson, fiction publishing director for the HarperCollins Voyager imprint in the UK, said:

“And finally, yesterday I got to spend some time with the legendary George RR Martin, over in the UK to visit the sets where HBO are filming the pilot episode of A GAME OF THRONES, which could be the finest ever tv fantasy epic.

We have his superb anthology tribute to Jack Vance out this month: the signing queues went round and round the block in Belfast, Dublin and London’s Forbidden Planet. Oddly, in that strange synchronicity which happens so frequently in my life, George flew out of London for Marrakech this morning, to see the desert and Dothraki scenes being filmed in and around Ouarzazate.

The really exciting news, other than the potential HBO series, is that we might get the long-awaited DANCE OF DRAGONS soon. I cannot wait.”

It is common for fans of the series, one of the major fantasy works currently ongoing, to complain about the length of time taken by Martin to write each new book. Although the first three in the series were published after intervals of about two years each, according to Wikipedia, the fourth book took a little longer; A Feast for Crows came out in 2005 after a five-year writing stint by Martin.

In October Martin revealed he had written more than 1,100 pages in the book. It was previously expected the book would be ready for editing by October or November this year.

Commentary
I have pretty much given up waiting for this one :) A Dance with Dragons will be ready when it is ready, and that’s about all I’m expecting.

(via Westeros.org and Tower of the Hand)

Raymond E. Feist fans are only a short time away from stepping back into the fantasy world of Midkemia, with the author’s new book At the Gates of Darkness due out in some areas in early January 2010.

The book continues the epic Riftwar Cycle, which now spans several dozen volumes. Feist has a strong track record of publishing a new book in the series almost every year, stretching back to the fan favourite Magician in 1982.

At the Gates of Darkness is the second book in the Demonwar Saga arc, after 2009′s Rides a Dread Legion. Its blurb is as follows:

“Recent events have shocked and devastated the Conclave of Shadows; the discovery of the Demon horde that is following the elven invaders of Midkemia; the rise of the mad magician Belasco, and the personal cost paid by Pug and his family.

But grieving for lost loved-ones must wait. The followers of the Demon prince have almost succeeded in bringing him through the dimensions. The Conclave must regroup and find a way to meet the approaching evil, whilst trying to stop civil war from destroying Triagia before the demon horde even arrives.”

The book was first announced in February 2008, and Amazon has it shipping in April 2010, but Feist’s official Crydee site has recently updated the UK/AU/NZ cover art for the book and listed the Australia and New Zealand dates, at least, to New Year’s Day (January 1), 2010.

Commentary
Oh god. Is Feist STILL writing this thing?

Like many fantasy fans, I hopped off the Feist train many moons ago, in fact as far back as 1998′s Shards of a Broken Crown. I can’t exactly remember what precisely was happening in the seires at that point, so I really can’t situate At the Gates of Darkness in terms of current plot or what’s happening with the characters.

It’s not that Feist is a bad writer. In fact, quite the opposite: he’s arguably one of the fantasy greats. However, I couldn’t continue to read his books, because it seemed to me that the same character archetypes and plot points kept on coming up again and again. It got boring after a while.

This seems to be a recurring problem with writers who pump out a book every year. Sure, the books might have a steady following of fans, and bring in the dollars, but are they really that good? Normally not. Normally it takes a bit longer than a year to put together a really interesting work of art in the genre. Witness how long it takes the likes of Janny Wurts or George R. R. Martin to put out their books. And they are considered amongst the grand masters.

I would be interested, however, to hear from any Feist fans out there who are still reading the Riftwar Cycle. Is it worth persevering through? Does Feist return to his form later on?